Xander Karskens

Director and Curator
Kasteel Wijlre Estate, Wijlre

Xander Karskens is a Dutch art historian and curator, currently working as Director and Curator at Kasteel Wijlre estate, a centre for contemporary art and nature located in the Zuid-Limburg hills. Previously, Xander served as director of international residency program De Ateliers in Amsterdam (2019-2022), and as artistic director of the Cobra Museum in Amstelveen (2016-2018), where he curated exhibitions like Le Corbusier’s Fourth Dimension (2017), and Restless Matter (2018). From 2006 to 2016, Karskens was curator of contemporary art at Frans Hals Museum | De Hallen Haarlem, where he worked on exhibitions and collections of contemporary art. Past curated exhibitions include: Evelyn Taocheng Wang (2017); Kasper Bosmans (2017); Philippe Van Snick, Cécile B. Evans, Meiro Koizumi (2016), Erkka Nissinen (2015) Michel Auder, Melanie Gilligan (2014), Roger Hiorns, Charles Atlas (2012), Daan van Golden, Matt Stokes (2011), among others. International curatorial projects include: Guido van der Werve - Trials and Resurrections (2020); Cave Myths – Endless Spelunking (2019); Nathaniel Mellors and Erkka Nissinen - The Aalto Natives at the Finnish National Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale, 2017.

Xander Karskens visited Vienna on a research trip as part of the exchange with the Mondriaan Fonds in 2023.

Xander Karskens, Photo: courtesy of the curator.